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Schools Face Confusion Over a Vaccine

WHEN Heidemarie Ratje of East Patchogue received a letter from the South Country Central School District last June saying that all students turning 11 would be required to get an immunization shot, she thought it did not apply to her daughter.

“I had just been to see my daughter’s pediatrician in May,” she said, adding that he never mentioned the shot to her.

But in November, Ms. Ratje said, she received another letter from the district saying her daughter would not be allowed in school starting Dec. 7 unless she handed in a form signed by a doctor saying she had received the vaccine called Tdap, a booster shot for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough. The shot became mandatory statewide Sept. 1 for all students when they turn 11.

Ms. Ratje quickly complied, but 104 students in the South Country School District — about one-fourth of the sixth grade — had still not received the shot when school resumed after the Christmas holiday.

The problem was big enough that South Country asked the Suffolk County Department of Health Services for help with the vaccinations — the only district in the county to do so, said Wendy Ladd, a department spokeswoman.

Yet after seven months and four letters, some students still have not had the shot and risk being barred from school, although the district has promised home schooling.

Jeffrey W. Hammond, a spokesman for the State Department of Health, said that although state law requires students to have the shot within 14 days of the start the school year, a child who is “in the process” of complying may attend class. That provision, he said, thus allows schools “additional time if they are working in good faith to achieve compliance.”

Susan A. Agruso, the district superintendent, said confusion about the vaccine and difficulty in getting medical care had resulted in some children not receiving the shots, and, in at least one other district, religious concerns about them had been raised.

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The South Country district sent a third letter to parents saying that the Health Department would have nurses in the district Jan. 7 to administer the vaccine. Twenty-eight students were inoculated that day, but by the end of that week, 39 still had not been inoculated. Dr. Agruso said another letter was hand-delivered to those students’ homes warning that the children would be excluded from school if they did not have the shot by Jan. 28.

“We’re trying to get it done,” Dr. Agruso said. “This is a new vaccine, and some parents said they thought their child had the shot because they had had another vaccine with a similar name. In another case the doctor didn’t have the vaccine, and some parents don’t have easy access to medical care.”

Cynthia D. Brown, a spokeswoman for the Nassau County Department of Health, said that in late September the Westbury school district asked for help in inoculating 11-year-olds who had not received the shots from their own doctors. The Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow responded by sending two physicians and a nurse to inoculate about 50 children. Ms. Brown said one student in a district she declined to name was barred from school for four days until getting the shot.

Rita M. Palma of Bayport said she and her husband, Ronald, had considered taking legal action against the Bayport-Blue Point School District over its immunization policy. She said it denied their request for a religious waiver last August after a two-hour hearing and then compelled two of their children to receive inoculations.

“To have your faith questioned and then disregarded is more traumatic than I ever expected,” she said, adding that more than a half-dozen other parents in the district were also denied a religious waiver.

The district’s lawyer, David M. Cohen of Melville, said the state requires school boards to review requests for religious exemptions to determine if they are based on religious opposition to immunization. “The law states that it can be your own personal religious beliefs, which makes it a very, very difficult decision for a board of education,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page LI6 of the New York edition with the headline: Schools Face Confusion Over a Vaccine. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe